"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."
What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

What I'm up too currently

I've spent the last 4 weeks or so doing paid work for my supervisor while waiting for my thesis to come back. Kind of fun, research is alot more enjoyable when your being paid to do it rather than paying to do it. Also knowing that at 5pm that's it for the day, and not having to worry about is it enough to get the thesis done makes a major difference. At this point looks like a mix of my work and some by a couple of his previous students will result in a paper which I'll be helping to right in the next few weeks, which would be rather good! Also the pay is nice and having something to do 4 days each week is good. Have also just restarted demonstrating with first year labs as they restart for the final term of the year. A fun set of lab's spent 2 afternoons this week at Travis wetlands and the Bromley oxidation ponds, helping students ID birds and making sure they don't loose any of the departments gear or do anything stupid. Also a nice chance to take the odd photo (See bottom of post), though of course the weather did the biology field trip thing and was rather bad both days (on Friday it clouded up just as we arrived there).

Apart from that have been doing a bit of reading and a decent bit of computer gaming so far have played:

Knights of the Old Republic - A rather impressive bioware starwars RPG would rate it an "A+".

Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords - Another good RPG by Obsidian, and a somewhat different focus the the previous one, not yet finished but think I'd rate it an "A" or "A-".

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Interesting semi RPG/FPS, good fun and rather spooky in parts "A-"

Bioshock - Not yet finished but a rather good FPS with some RPG elements, I don't think it's quite as good as every thinks though "A-"

Fallout 1 - Older (1997) GURPS derived (You are "SPECIAL") post nuclear war RPG, with a 1950's style, lots of adult humor and rather violent but a bloody good game (both figuratively and literally) "A+" If you haven't played it you should runs on both Mac and PC.

Fallout 2 - Larger more complex, and less tightly woven than the orginal still lots of fun though I haven't finished it yet (A-)

Half Life 2 ep 1 - Also played abit of the first episode for HL2, all right but not amazing (B+)